LIMA — After being briefly featured in a Tuesday New York Times article about President Donald Trump’s moves against the Mueller investigation, Rep. Jim Jordan confirmed his involvement with other Republican House Freedom Caucus members to highlight what Jordan calls the “raw deal” dealt to the president by Justice Department leaders in the early months of Trump’s presidency.

Jordan said he received a call from U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, in July 2017 — two months after FBI Director James Comey was dismissed — to discuss the need for the party “to go play offense.”

“Matt’s attitude, and I totally agreed, was we need to start talking about all the abuse that took place at the highest levels of the Justice Department. We had that conversation, and frankly, there have been a group of us that have been focused on the raw deal that the president got,” Jordan said.

Up until Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in 2018, Jordan and other conservative House members — Reps. Mark Meadows, Andy Biggs and Devin Nunes — have used Congress’ investigative powers to question justice officials in those terms, creating a parallel investigation against justice members, many who have resigned or been fired, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted a number of officials closely related to Trump.

“We’re like, ‘This is crazy.’ We started pushing back and the more we pushed back, the more we learned about all the wrongdoing they were doing. Coupled with the good work Devin Nunes was doing on the Intel Committee relative to the (Steele) dossier, and we’ve been trying to get to the truth ever since,” Jordan said. “We feel like this should never have happened in our country and yet it did.”

As for why Justice Department members dealt Trump a “raw deal,” Jordan said their actions stem from a deep animus against the president.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who has made rounds on national news outlets this past weekend in conjunction with a book release, said Justice Department officials discussed concerns that Trump was a national security threat and helped solidify the Mueller investigation after Comey’s firing.

“You got to remember the mindset of (Washington, D.C.) at the time,” Jordan said. “May 9, 2017: the president fires Jim Comey. The whole town goes ‘Oh, you can’t do that,’ and the folks at the FBI are like: ‘What? Our best pal just got fired. And we hate the president.”

While Jordan didn’t go so far to call the Mueller investigation a “witch hunt” — a phrase often tweeted by the president — Jordan expressed concerns that investigations into the president were “built on a faulty premise,” primarily the Steele dossier.

“It’s obvious from the get go where their motivation and where their bias was,” Jordan said.

“The question was if there was ever coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia to hack the election. There’s been no evidence whatsoever of coordination to impact the election,” Jordan said.